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Mechanical  Arithmetic 

or  the 
History  of  the  Counting  Machine 


Washi"6t|^Instit^^ 


LECTURES  ON  BUSINESS 

Edited  by  THOMAS  H.  RUSSELL,  A.  M.,  LL.  D. 


Mechanical  Arithmetic 

or 

The  History  of  the 
Counting  Machine 


by 

D.  E.  FELT 

President  of 

ELT  &  TARRANT  MFG.  CO.,  Chicago 

Manufacturers  of  the  Comptometer 


Introduction 


This  lecture  by  the  well-known  inventor  and  manufacturer 
of  the  famous  calculating  machine  known  to  all  American 
bookkeepers  and  office  men  as  the  Comptometer,  will  be 
appreciated  by  all  business  men  and  students  of  Business 
who  realize  the  wonderful  strides  made  in  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century  in  the  mechanical  aids  to  efficiency  in  the 
accounting  departments  of  commercial  life. 

Mr.  D.  E.  Felt  stands  high  on  the  roll  of  successful  Amer- 
ican inventors,  and,  unlike  so  many  of  them,  he  possesses  a 
well-developed  business  instinct  that  has  enabled  him  to 
reap  the  due  reward  of  his  inventive  genius.  His  standing 
as  an  inventor  is  recognized  in  Europe  as  well  as  in  the 
United  States,  and  during  the  visits  to  the  European 
museums  to  which  he  refers  in  his  lecture  he  was  signally 
honored  by  being  permitted  to  make  close  examination  and 
tests  of  the  historic  calculating  machines  preserved  in  those 
institutions;  so  that  he  speaks  with  unusual  authority  on 
this  interesting  subject  of  the  development  of  "Mechanical 
Arithmetic"  from  the  earliest  times  of  which  records  exist. 

Mr.  Felt  tells  in  his  lecture  his  own  story  of  the  dawn  and 
origin  of  his  great  idea,  and  how  he  proceeded  to  carry  it 
into  effect ;  and  this  part  of  his  lecture,  brief  as  it  is,  indi- 
cates the  magnitude  of  his  undertaking,  while  leaving  to  the 
imagination  of  the  reader  the  years  of  effort  that  were  re- 
quired to  give  to  the  world  of  commerce  and  finance  the 
splendid  mechanical  calculator  with  which  his  name  will 
ever  be  associated  in  the  history  of  American  invention  and 
American  business. 

436C83 


After  his  invention  of  the  Comptometer,  it  is  interesting 
to  note,  it  took  him  almost  three  years  to  sell  the  first  hun- 
dred machines.  But  these  were  the  first  key-operated  add- 
ing machines  to  be  manufactured  and  sold  in  this  countrj\ 
Today  they  are  found  in  every  large  office  and  accounting 
department  in  America,  effecting  large  savings  in  time, 
effort,  and  money. 

In  1888  Mr.  Felt  tackled  the  problem  of  listing  machines, 
which  others  had  tried,  without  success,  to  solve.  He  finally 
perfected  the  Comptograph,  which  was  the  first  successful 
listing  machine,  and  an  invention  of  no  small  importance. 

Thus  while  Mr.  Felt's  Comptometers  were  the  pioneers  of 
key-driven  adding  and  calculating  machines,  his  Compto- 
graphs  were  the  pioneers  of  keyboard  listing  adding  ma- 
chines, and  both  have  been  of  immense  service  in  "leading 
the  bookkeepers  out  of  bondage." 

But  the  tale  oi  the  inventor's  important  contributions  to 
rapid  calculation  is  not  yet  fully  told.  In  1901  Mr.  Felt, 
after  infinite  labor,  produced  the  first  duplex  key-driven 
calculator,  and  thus  made  practicable  rapid  multiplication 
by  machinery.  Since  that  time  public  contests  at  Office 
Appliance  and  Business  Shows  held  in  Madison  Square  Gar- 
den, New  York,  and  in  other  cities  have  demonstrated  the 
marvelous  possibilities  of  Mr.  Felt's  mechanical  calculators 
and  a  deep  debt  of  gratitude  is  due  him  from  the  business 
world. 

T.  H.  R. 


Mechanical  Arithmetic 


or 


The  History  of  the 
Counting  Machine 

By  D.  E.  FELT 

President  FELT  &  TARRANT  MFG.  CO.,  Chicago 
Manufacturers  of  the  Comptometer 


I  will  endeavor  to  give  you  an  idea  that  the  adding- 
machine  art  is  not  quite  as  new  as  one  might  think.  We 
are  apt  to  think  that  adding  machines  are  something  very- 
new. 

When  I  say  "adding  machines"  or  "computing  machines," 
I  mean  counting  machines,  because  all  mathematics  is  count- 
ing. We  are  quite  apt  to  consider  multiplication  or  division 
something  different  from  counting.  Primarily  it  is  addition, 
nothing  else ;  or,  to  be  more  exact,  it  is  counting.  The  reason 
that  we  say  multiplication,  or  practise  what  we  call  multipli- 
cation, is  that  we  have  learned  the  multiplication  table.  We 
make  a  sort  of  short-cut  counting,  because  we  have  already 
learned  a  few  simple  elements  in  counting,  like  2X4  are  8, 
or  3  X 12  are  36. 

The  first  arithmetic,  the  first  counting,  was  undoubtedly 
mechanical.  We  say  "to  calculate."  The  word  "calculate" 
means  to  count  with  pebbles.  Calculi  is  Latin  for  pebbles, 
therefore  calculating  is  counting  with  pebbles.  That  is 
where  the  term  started. 


.£  •  ;:•:.*•:*•,•':•.-■:.*•*-••■  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

We  call  the  numeral  characters  which  we  use  digits. 
"Digits"  mean  fingers.  If  men  had  six  fingers  instead  of 
five,  we  would  have  had  the  duodecimal  system  of  notation, 
instead  of  the  decimal,  and  it  would  have  been  very  much 
easier  to  make  arithmetical  calculations  than  it  is,  using  as 
we  do  the  decimal  system  of  tens.  For  instance,  with  the 
decimal  system,  if  we  want  to  multiply  anything  by  twenty- 
five,  simply  divide  by  four  and  add  two  ciphers.  We  can 
make  a  few  short  cuts  with  the  decimal  system  like  that, 
but  if  we  used  twelve  numeral  characters  or  twelve  digits, — 
that  is,  the  duodecimal  system, — we  could  have  made  a  great 
many  short  cuts.  That  is  why  astronomers  use  a  sort  of 
different  mathematics.  That  is  why  they  divide  the  circle 
into  three  hundred  and  sixty  degrees  instead  of  into  one 
hundred  degrees,  because  twelve  can  be  divided  in  a  great 
many  ways — 3,  4,  6,  and  2  are  all  factors  of  12.  In  ten 
we  have  only  2  and  5. 

There  isn't  any  way  to  tell  just  what  the  earliest  calculat- 
ing machines  were.  We  can  only  make  a  surmise.  We  know 
that  from  the  earliest  historic  times  people  have  calculated 
with  pebbles;  then  they  went  a  little  farther,  because  the 
pebbles  lying  on  the  ground  or  on  the  boards  would  get 
mixed  up,  and  instead  of  using  pebbles  they  used  beads, 
strung  on  rods,  and  by  putting  a  number  of  rods  in  a  frame 
made  and  used  the  device  called  "abacus." 

There  were  different  systems  of  those  rods.  There  is  a 
system,  used  largely  in  China  and  the  far  East,  which  has 
five  beads  on  one  end  of  one  rod,  then  a  division  in  the 
frame,  then  two  beads  on  the  other  end  of  the  rod.  There 
are  two  5's  in  ten  that  make  a  positive  count,  and  you  can 
keep  track  of  the  carrying  by  means  of  the  other  two.  But 
the  more  common  form  of  abacus  is  what  is  known  as  the 
Greek  abacus,  which  is   still  used   almost  universally  in 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  ^ 

Russia,  and  in  many  countries  of  Eastern  Europe.    It  has 
nine  beads  on  one  rod,  then  a  division,  then  one  bead. 

It  would  be  rather  difficult  for  you  and  me  to  sit  down 
with  a  lot  of  pebbles  and  try  to  compute  with  them,  but  that 
is  because  we  didn't  learn  to  do  it  that  way.  Perhaps  if  we 
had  spent  as  much  time  learning  to  compute  with  pebbles 
as  we  have  learning  to  play  whist,  we  could  do  it  with  sur- 
prising rapidity.  Orientals  do  those  things  very  rapidly; 
in  fact,  the  Japanese  have  a  sort  of  mathematics  with  many 
short  cuts  that  are  worth  studying,  because  they  show  us 
short  cuts  that  we  never  thought  of.  They  have  the  same 
number  of  fingers  and  consequently  the  same  decimal  system 
that  we  have.  Naturally  we  can  profit  by  some  of  their 
mathematical  discoveries. 

The  First  Counting  Machine 

The  first  counting  machine  that  we  have  in  written  history 
comes  through  a  man  named  Gerbert.  Gerbert  was  a  shep- 
herd boy.  A  monk  noticed  that  he  was  very  ingenious,  very 
bright.  He  made  an  instrument  for  playing  music  by  peel- 
ing the  bark  off  limbs  of  trees,  and  fitting  it  with  reeds ;  then 
he  ran  water  through  a  pipe  to  force  air  down  and  vibrate 
the  reeds.  So  the  monk  educated  him.  He  knew  that  at 
that  time,  which  was  about  900  A.  D.,  practically  all  the 
knowledga  and  science  of  the  world  was  possessed  by  the 
Moors.  They  occupied  southern  Spain,  as  well  as  north 
Africa. 

The  Moors  had  two  great  universities,  one  at  Cordova  and 
the  other  at  Seville,  but  no  Christian  could  enter  them,  so 
Gerbert  associated  for  some  years  with  Moors,  lived  their 
life  and  adopted  their  customs,  and  learned  the  Mohamme- 
dan religion.  Then  he  disappeared  from  the  monks,  those 
who  had  known  him  before,  and  in  Moorish  garb  applied  at 


8  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

one  of  these  universities  to  be  taken  in.  As  he  seemed  to 
be  a  good  Mohammedan,  they  took  him  in  and  he  went 
through  that  university  and  then  he  went  to  the  other. 
After  he  had  graduated  from  both,  he  came  back  into 
Christian  Europe. 

When  Gerbert  came  back  he  brought  with  him  what  we 
call  the  Arabic  numerals.  They  are  what  we  use.  But  they 
were  then  very  different  in  form  from  the  Arabic  numerals 
as  we  write  them  today,  because  we  have  changed  them. 
They  originated  in  northern  India.  The  Arabians  used  nine 
significant  digits  and  the  ciphers. 

Gerbert  came  back  in  the  year  960,  I  think  it  was,  or 
within  three  or  four  years  of  that.  Printing  was  unknown. 
Consequently,  the  knowledge  that  he  brought  back  to  Europe 
did  not  spread,  and  it  wasn't  until  several  hundred  years 
afterwards,  until  the  invention  of  printing,  that  the  Arabic 
numerals  came  into  general  use.  When  he  came  back  he 
brought  with  him  a  plan  for  a  calculating  machine  that  the 
Moors  had  been  working  at,  but  had  never  succeeded  in 
making  work.  He  spent  many  years  of  his  life  trying  to 
make  it  work.  He  thought  he  could,  but  he  could  not.  He 
could  not  get  accurate  results  at  all.  Otherwise  he  was  very 
successful ;  afterwards  he  was  Pope  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church — Sylvester  II. 

Early  Calculating  Machines 

But  another  Spaniard  took  up  the  idea  and  made  a  calcu- 
lating machine.  His  name  was  Magnus.  As  far  as  we  know 
his  machine  worked.  History  says  it  did,  but  having  seen 
some  twenty  famous  old  calculating  machines  in  Europe 
made  three  or  four  hundred  years  ago,  I  have  my  doubts 
about  its  accuracy.  It  was  formed  of  brass,  in  the  shape 
of  a  human  head,  and  the  figures  showed  where  the  teeth 
came. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  9 

Another  man,  at  the  same  time,  named  Bacon,  made  one 
also  of  the  same  character.  I  say  at  the  same  time.  Magnus 
made  his  shortly  after  the  year  1000  A.  D.,  and  Bacon  made 
his  perhaps  ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty  years  later.  It  is  not 
known  exactly.  What  became  of  the  machine  of  Bacon  is 
not  known,  but  the  one  that  Magnus  made  was  smashed  with 
a  club.  The  other  priests — they  were  both  priests  of  the 
Catholic  Church — thought  it  was  something  superhuman. 
He  tried  to  make  out  that  it  was,  and  concealed  the  fact  that 
it  was  a  piece  of  calculating  mechanism.  So  they  smashed 
that  one  up. 

Those  were  undoubtedly  complicated  pieces  of  machinery, 
but  they  accomplished  no  more  than  the  little  twenty-five- 
cent  adding  machines  that  we  now  see,  consisting  of  three 
or  four  little  discs  in  a  row,  where  you  insert  a  stylus  and 
turn  the  wheels  around.  This  modern  simplicity  is  due  to 
the  mechanic  arts  having  developed  more  fully. 

In  those  days  the  necessity  for  calculating  machines  was 
realized  much  more  than  it  is  now.  If  you  write  down  a 
problem,  like  4,625  multiplied  by  360,  in  what  are  called 
Roman  numerals — the  numerals  that  we  use  on  the  dial  of 
a  clock — you  will  see  it  would  be  very  difficult  to  multiply. 
For  that  reason  you  will  see  that  addition  was  almost  as 
difficult,  because  there  were  no  individual  columns — units, 
tens,  etc. — the  digits  in  each  falling  one  beneath  the  other. 
So  there  were  only  a  very  few  of  the  people  who  could  mul- 
tiply, or  add  or  divide,  or  do  anything  in  mathematics. 
Those  that  could  were  considered  something  strange,  like  an 
astrologer.  That  condition  continued  until  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century. 

They  had  adopted  the  Arabic  numerals,  I  think,  quite  gen- 
erally, about  the  fifteenth  century,  but  it  was  easily  some 
hundreds  of  years  after  that  before  arithmetic,  as  we  teach 


10  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

it  to  the  children  in  school,  became  generally  spread  among 
the  people.  Even  for  hundreds  of  years  afterwards  the 
people  did  not  seem  to  acquire  that  facility  of  mental  calcu- 
lation that  we  practise  today.  Consequently,  efforts  to  make 
mechanical  calculators  were  very  great  and  very  long  con- 
tinued. A  mere  list  of  the  noted  scientific  men  that  devoted 
many  years  to  the  subject  would  contain  hundreds  of  names. 

Pascars  Mechanical  Calculator 

But  among  all  that  number  certain  ones  made  a  little  step 
forward  here  and  there;  they  made  some  progress.  There 
were  many  ambitious  efforts  to  make  what  we  would  now 
call  a  highly  organized  mechanical  calculator.  None  of  those 
succeeded.  The  most  famous  was  by  Pascal  in  1642.  He  is 
credited  with  being  the  first  to  make  a  mechanical  calcu- 
lator. But  I  do  not  think  he  fully  deserved  it.  He  didn't 
make  one  that  would  calculate  accurately,  even  if  you 
handled  it  with  the  greatest  care  and  took  hold  of  the  wheels 
and  cogs  after  taking  the  top  off  the  machine,  trying  to  help 
them  along.  I  have  tried  them  myself  on  several  of  his 
machines  which  are  preserved,  and  making  due  allowance 
for  age  they  never  could  have  been  in  any  sense  accurate 
mechanical  calculators.  Furthermore,  they  were  very  large ; 
probably  eighteen  inches  long,  ten  inches  wide  and  six  or 
eight  inches  high.  They  would  have  accomplished  nothing 
more,  even  if  they  had  worked,  than  these  little  things  you 
stick  in  your  vest  pocket,  with  four  dials  which  are  operated 
with  a  stylus.  His  machine  was  operated  exactly  the  same. 
But  its  great  bulk,  the  largeness  of  the  machine,  was  occa- 
sioned by  the  very  complicated  carrying  mechanism,  to 
transmit  tens  from  one  order  to  the  next,  units  to  tens,  and 
tens  to  hundreds,  etc.  But,  having  been  the  greatest  scien- 
tist of  his  time,  and  having  a  great  many  friends,  and  being 
a  Frenc'hman — (the  French  recorded  the  efforts  of  the  dif- 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  11 

ferent  attempted  inventions  in  calculators  more  perfectly 
than  any  other  nation) — ^he  is  given  a  great  deal  of  credit 
in  that  direction. 

Sir  Samuel  Moreland,  in  England  in  1663,  made  a  mechan- 
ical calculator  which  was  practically  in  all  respects  the  same 
little  disk  machine  of  today,  compact  and  simple.  He  was  a 
famous  scientist  also,  but  his  machine  didn't  come  into  very 
general  use.  Probably  there  were  a  few  hundred  used. 
Some  are  still  in  existence.  That  was  about  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago. 

Pascal  was  undoubtedly  a  great  scientist  in  many  different 
ways.  He  did  many  things  for  the  human  race,  and  one  of 
those  for  which  he  is  most  celebrated  is  the  invention  of  the 
omnibus,  called  the  twenty-centimes  omnibus.  That  would 
be  about  four  cents  fare,  and  his  omnibus  was  the  first  thing 
of  the  kind  known.  He  is  very  famous  for  that,  much  more 
so  than  for  the  great  many  books  he  wrote  on  science.  The 
foundation  of  several  branches  of  science  is  lound  in  his 
books. 

Pascal  started  at  his  calculating  machine  very  young.  He 
was  only  about  eighteen.  His  father  was  what  we  call  a 
customs  officer  and  the  boy  was  often  made  to  compute. 
It  was  very  laborious,  and  so  he  conceived  the  idea  of  making 
this  machine.  It  is  said  that  he  had  never  heard  of  anything 
of  the  kind  before,  but  there  are  records  of  many  attempts 
before  him. 

The  Work  of  Leibnitz 

About  that  time,  or  a  little  later,  there  was  a  great 
scientist  in  Germany,  named  Leibnitz.  He  was  probably  a 
greater  man  than  Pascal.  He  is  said  to  have  been  the  in- 
ventor of  the  differential  calculus,  on  which  nearly  all  the 
higher  mathematics,  as  practised  in  engineering,  is  based. 


12  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

It  is  a  question,  however,  whether  he  really  was  the  first 
to  invent  the  differential  calculus.  The  English  say  Napier 
did  it.  Napier  was  also  a  great  scientist  and  wrote  books, 
so  what  he  did  was  preserved. 

Leibnitz  never  wrote  many  books,  but  wrote  a  great  many 
letters.  Those  letters  are  so  important  that  you  can  go  to 
our  libraries  today  and  find  photographs  of  hundreds  of  let- 
ters written  by  Leibnitz.  Many  of  the  fundamental  princi- 
ples of  our  present-day  science  are  found  for  the  first  time  in 
those  letters.  He  is  said  by  some  recent  scientists  to  have 
possessed  the  greatest  brain  the  world  has  ever  known.  He 
was  honored  and  decorated  and  received  by  the  Czar  of 
Russia  and  the  Emperors  of  France  and  Austria,  and  by 
many  of  the  German  kings,  but  he  was  not  satisfied.  He 
was  jealous  of  Pascal,  so  he  went  to  work  to  make  a  calcu- 
lating machine,  because  in  that  day  Pascal  was  noted  more 
for  his  calculating  machine  than  for  other  things  much  more 
valuable  and  wonderful. 

Leibnitz  had  some  money — 250,000  francs,  they  say.  He 
spent  all  he  had  and  his  calculating  machines  didn't  work. 
He  made  two  or  three.  He  employed  watchmakers  to  do  the 
work,  and  he  blames  their  failure  to  the  watchmakers,  the 
same  as  Pascal  does.  Both  blame  it  to  the  mechanics  that 
their  machines  were  not  entirely  satisfactory. 

It  is  said  that  Leibnitz  worked  twelve  years  on  his  ma- 
chine. He  wasted  all  the  money  he  had,  and  dropped  out  of 
sight.  There  was  only  one  man  that  went  to  the  grave  with 
his  remains  when  he  was  buried,  in  absolute  poverty.  A  few 
years  before  he  had  been  noted  as  the  greatest  scientist  in 
Europe. 

It  was  claimed  by  some  that  another  man  in  France, 
Grillet  by  name,  who  knew  of  Pascal's  efforts,  tried  to  make 
a  calculating  machine,  and  that  he  came  much  nearer  to 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  13 

success  in  making  an  accurate  machine  than  did  Pascal. 
The  machine  was  not  used,  but  was  exhibited  for  a  fee,  and 
then  all  of  a  sudden  it  dropped  out  of  sight  and  nobody  knew 
what  became  of  it.  So  some  claim  that  Leibnitz  didn't  gen- 
erate any  machine,  or  rather  any  mechanism  for  his  ma- 
chine, out  of  his  own  head,  but  that  he  procured  this  machine 
in  France  and  took  the  inside  out  of  it  and  put  it  in  another 
case. 

When  I  was  in  Paris  a  few  years  ago,  I  saw  the  case  Leib- 
nitz is  supposed  to  have  taken  the  mechanism  out  of.  I 
examined  it  very  carefully,  and  I  also  examined  another 
machine  very  much  like  it,  that  has  the  insides  still  in  it. 
When  I  was  at  the  Royal  Library,  Hanover,  Germany,  I 
had  Leibnitz's  machine  open  and  examined  that  very  care- 
fully, and  I  am  sure  that  there  is  no  possibility  that  Leibnitz 
could  have  used  any  of  the  mechanism  out  of  the  machine 
made  in  France.  The  two  machines  are  entirely  different  in 
organization,  starting  from  different  conceptions,  and,  I  was 
going  to  say,  arriving  at  different  results ;  but  they  all  ended 
in  failures,  which  is  true  of  all  attempted  highly-organized 
calculating  machines  up  to  the  year  of  1820. 

The  First  Successful  Machine 

Charles  Xavier  Thomas,  a  director  of  an  insurance  com- 
pany in  France,  made  a  calculating  machine  in  1820  and  it 
worked.  Without  question  it  was  the  first  one  that  ever  did 
work  practically  and  usefully.  When  I  say  a  calculating 
machine  I  mean  a  highly-organized  machine,  because  there 
had  been  devices  for  calculating,  like  the  abacus,  before  that, 
which  worked ;  simple  devices  that  were  practical  and  useful, 
some  of  them  used  to  a  very  large  extent,  but  they  were  not 
devices  that  we  would  use.    They  were  less  automatic. 

One  of  these  simple  devices,  which  is  quite  as  famous  as 


14  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

the  machine  of  Pascal,  was  invented  by  Napier,  of  Scotland, 
the  inventor  of  the  differential  calculus.  Napier  wrote  the 
multiplication  table  on  some  little  rods.  He  didn't  write  it 
as  we  find  it  in  our  textbooks  in  school,  but  he  wrote  it  on 
square  rods,  in  such  a  manner  that  the  tens  figure  of  each 
product  in  the  multiplication  would  fall  in  a  triangle,  oppos- 
ing another  triangle  in  the  same  square  containing  the  units 
figure  of  the  product  corresponding.  He  used  rods  about 
the  size  of  a  pencil,  with  parts  of  the  multiplication  table 
written  on  them,  only  there  were  four  sides.  For  instance, 
the  products  of  6  written  on  one  side,  those  of  7  on  another 
side,  and  so  on.  He  would  select  rods  corresponding  to  the 
multiplication  and  Jay  them  alongside  of  one  another,  ascer- 
tain the  first  sub-product  by  a  simple  addition,  write  it  down, 
then  get  the  next  sub-product  by  the  same  means,  and  so  on, 
finally  adding  all  the  sub-products  together.  If  he  had  to 
multiply  243  by  46  he  would  do  it  by  three  mental  additions. 

Those  rods  (Napier's  rods)  were  used  very  largely,  not 
only  in  England,  but  all  over  the  Continent.  They  were 
considered  a  great  thing,  and  people  not  understanding  that 
it  was  simply  the  multiplication  table  written  on  strips, 
thought  there  was  something  mystic  about  it,  and  he  was 
very  much  honored  for  the  invention.  No  doubt  he  orig- 
inated it  out  of  his  own  mind,  but  the  same  thing  was  known 
to  the  Arabs  many  years  before  that ;  in  fact,  they  practise 
something  like  that  today,  but  have  it  arranged  a  little 
differently. 

In  the  meantime,  between  Leibnitz  and  Thomas,  there 
were  several  men  who  made  machines  which  are  still  in 
existence.  There  was  a  man  named  Poleni  in  Venice,  who 
made  a  machine  in  1709,  but  that  machine  is  not  in  exist- 
ence. It  was  a  very  near  approach  to  an  accurate  calculator, 
but  not  reliable  enough  to  be  used  to  any  extent.    There  are 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  t5 

two  machines  in  the  museum  at  Munich,  Germany,  which 
are  said  to  be  copies  of  it,  made  at  the  same  time,  and  they 
are  wonderful  pieces  of  mechanism.  They  are  beautiful  to 
look  at,  very  far  superior  to  most  of  the  calculating  machines 
of  early  times. 

The  Odhner  Type  of  Machine 

In  1775  Earl  Stanhope,  in  England,  made  two  machines. 
Some  say  he  copied  Pascal,  but  he  didn't.  His  are  very  dif- 
ferent. One  of  them,  if  it  had  worked  accurately,  would 
have  been  the  prototype  of  that  class  of  machine  known  as 
the  Odhner  type.  Odhner  lived  in  Russia.  Some  say  he  was 
a  Pole,  but  I  believe  he  was  a  Scandinavian.  He  made  a 
successful  machine  about  1876.  There  is  a  great  family  of 
machines  made  in  Europe  at  present,  known  as  the  Odhner 
type ;  probably  twenty  factories  making  such  machines.  The 
Brunsviga  is  one  of  them.  Odhner  manufactures  them  him- 
self in  Russia,  but  he  is  not  so  successful  commercially  as 
are  the  French  and  German  manufacturers  of  that  type  of 
machine. 

But  a  hundred  years  earlier — 1775 — Lord  Stanhope  had 
in  his  machine  the  heart  of  the  Odhner  machine.  Each  kind 
of  machine — I  do  not  care  whether  it  be  an  automobile  or  a 
calculating  machine — has  some  fundamental  feature,  some 
heart,  some  key  to  it,  which  represents  the  invention,  which 
once  thought  of  and  produced  successfully,  the  rest  is  easy. 
That  feature  of  the  Odhner  machine  is  found  in  the  machine 
of  Earl  Stanhope  for  the  first  time.  But  it  is  not  accurate 
and  never  was.  It  is  very  fragile.  They  wouldn't  let  me 
operate  it  in  the  museum  where  it  is  preserved  in  London, 
but  I  examined  it  very  closely.  No  doubt  it  could  be  operated 
if  handled  very  delicately  and  would  get  results. 


16  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

Another  machine  made  by  Earl  Stanhope  about  the  year 
1777,  contained  the  heart  of  what  is  known  as  the  Thomas 
type  of  machine.  That  machine  contained  a  series  of  toothed 
wheels,  having  wide  faces  bearing  ten  very  long  teeth ;  the 
first  one,  reaching  clear  across  the  face,  representing  9,  the 
next  tooth  being  one-ninth  shorter,  the  next  one-eighth 
shorter,  and  so  on.  If  you  want  to  add  9,  you  shove  the 
toothed  wheel  along  so  that  nine  teeth  will  engage;  if  8, 
you  shove  it  along  so  that  eight  will  engage.  That  is  in  the 
second  Stanhope  machine,  and  it  is  the  general  principle  of 
the  Thomas  machine.  In  the  Odhner  type  they  get  the 
variable  number  of  engaging  teeth  by  having  a  wheel  with 
movable  teeth  in  it  so  they  can  slide  in  and  out.  As  they 
turn  a  lever  more  or  fewer  teeth  slide  out. 

Those  two  Stanhope  machines  are  probably,  barring  Leib- 
nitz's, the  first  attempts  to  make  any  machine  on  either  the 
Thomas  or  Odhner  principle,  although  there  are  some  very 
old  machines  in  Germany  that  contain  the  Odhner  principle, 
and  I  am  trying  to  find  out  about  them. 

Perhaps,  however,  I  am  not  quite  fair  to  Leibnitz.  Leib- 
nitz anticipated  the  Thomas  type  of  machine  in  so  far  as 
he  had  the  cylinders  with  longer  and  shorter  teeth,  etc.,  but 
his  organization  was  so  entirely  different  from  the  Thomas 
organization  or  anything  that  has  ever  been  brought  to  a 
successful  conclusion  that  I  could  hardly  say  that  he  antici- 
pated Thomas  in  the  same  sense  that  Earl  Stanhope  did. 

"The  Fault  of  the  Mechanic" 

Earl  Stanhope  was  another  fellow  who  had  his  machines 
made  by  watchmakers,  and  he  also  blames  the  lack  of  suc- 
cess to  the  men  who  made  the  machines.  I  guess  he  is 
right.  There  is  no  doubt  it  was  the  fault  of  the  mechanic. 
The  whole  thing  rests  with  the  mechanic.    He  deserves  all 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  17 

credit  and  all  blame.  Anybody,  with  a  little  bit  of  study, 
can  think  up  a  calculating  machine;  it  is  no  trouble  at  all. 
There  are  any  number  of  ways  to  go  about  it,  and  devise 
something  in  the  air  or  on  paper;  but  it  is  a  very  difficult 
proposition  to  make  one  that  will  be  simple  and  produce 
accurate  results  in  use.  There  is  hardly  a  week  that  I  don't 
get  a  letter  from  some  man  who  has  invented  a  calculating 
machine  far  superior  to  anything  now  on  the  market,  and 
he  wants  me  to  give  him  the  money  to  patent  it,  and  if  I 
don't,  he  says  he  will  take  all  the  calculating-machine  busi- 
ness away  from  all  the  rest  of  us. 

It  looks  simple.  When  I  first  thought  of  making  a  calcu- 
lating machine,  I  was  working  in  a  machine  shop.  I  was 
running  a  planer.  A  planer  has  a  tool  that  runs  back  and 
forth  across  one  or  more  notches  according  to  how  you 
adjust  it.    I  said,  "Why  can't  that  be  used  for  counting?" 

I  thought  about  it  all  night,  and  pretty  soon  I  said,  "I 
will  make  such  a  machine." 

I  had  a  friend  who  was  an  electrical  engineer,  and  I  told 
him  what  I  was  going  to  do,  and  said :  "In  ninety  days  every 
office  in  the  United  States  will  be  doing  its  calculating  by 
machinery." 

So  I  went  to  the  grocery  and  bought  a  macaroni  box  to 
make  the  frame  of.  I  went  to  the  butcher  and  bought 
skewers  to  make  the  keys  of,  and  to  the  hardware  store  and 
bought  staples,  and  to  the  bookstore  and  bought  rubber 
bands  to  use  for  springs.  I  went  to  work  to  make  a  calcu- 
lating machine,  expecting  to  have  thousands  in  use  in  ninety 
days.  I  began  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  because  that  was  a 
holiday,  and  worked  that  day,  and  Christmas  and  New 
Year's,  but  I  didn't  get  it  done  in  three  days.  It  was  a  long 
time  before  I  got  it  done. 


18  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

Modern  European  Machines 

To  go  back  to  the  history  of  calculating  machines : 

Another  mar  made  a  wonderful  machine  in  1777,  contain- 
ing the  Odhner  principle  which  I  saw  in  Germany.  He  made 
another  in  1809  which  did  not  contain  the  Odhner  principle. 

The  Thomas  machine  is  still  being  manufactured  in  the 
same  place,  in  Colmar,  France,  in  which  the  first  one  was 
made,  three  generations  ago.  It  worked.  It  was  useful  and 
a  great  many  were  used.  It  didn't  get  out  of  France  until 
about  forty  years  ago,  when  the  insurance  people  took  up 
the  subject,  and  particularly  through  the  efforts  of  a  college 
for  actuaries  in  Scotland,  the  science  of  using  the  Thomas 
machine  was  written  up  and  advanced.  There  is  a  lot  to 
know  about  mechanical  arithmetic. 

Then  a  man  in  England  began  manufacturing  a  copy  of 
the  Thomas  machine,  a  man  named  Tait,  and  he  is  still 
manufacturing  it  in  London.  He  made  a  splendid  machine. 
It  is  the  best  constructed  machine  made  in  Europe.  He  sold 
it  for  $450,  and  a  good  many  were  used  in  this  country 
twenty-five  years  ago.  It  is  the  most  accurate  calculating 
machine  and  the  only  durable  calculating  machine  ever  made 
in  Europe. 

But  Tait  had  no  commercial  ability  whatever.  The  chief 
accountant  of  the  Great  Western  Railway  in  England  called 
at  my  hotel  in  London  one  day,  a  few  years  ago,  and  I  asked 
him  about  Tait.  He  said  Tait  had  then  two  or  three  mechan- 
ics working  in  London;  yet  he  was  then  making,  and  has 
made  for  twenty-five  years,  the  only  nearly  accurate  and 
durable  calculating  machine  made  in  Europe,  in  the  sense 
that  we  Americans  consider  a  calculating  machine  accurate 
and  durable.  I  don't  mean  like  the  old  machines  that 
wouldn't  be  accurate  no  matter  how  delicately  you  use  them ; 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  19 

but  the  Tait  is  a  very  accurate  machine.  Yet  I  have  in  my 
possession  a  pamphlet  issued  about  twenty  years  ago,  when 
Tait  was  doing  considerable  business,  in  which  he  starts  out 
by  telling  that  you  must,  every  time  before  you  start  to  use 
your  machine,  test  it  and  then  adjust  the  springs  with  some 
little  screws  until  it  computes  accurately;  and  then  he  goes 
on  and  cautions  three  or  four  times,  "Don't  run  it  too  fast." 
Nevertheless,  the  Tait  machine  was  far  and  away  above  any 
European  machine  made  today  or  heretofore,  regardless  of 
the  fact  that  many  calculating  machines  are  being  used  in 
Europe. 

The  Brunsviga  Machine 

Nearly  every  large  office  in  Europe  uses  a  number  of  the 
Brunsviga  machines,  but  every  one  of  them  will  overthrow 
the  numeral  wheels  and  give  a  wrong  answer  if  operated 
rapidly.  The  recent  catalogues  of  the  Brunsviga  machine 
say  they  have  overcome  that  difficulty.  We  have  seen  that 
claim  time  and  again  for — I  guess — fifteen  years,  and  we 
will  see  it  until  they  start  from  a  different  standpoint  to 
build  a  machine  on  a  different  principle. 

The  Brunsviga  people  are  very  energetic.  They  put 
money  into  pushing  their  business,  and  they  sell  a  great 
many  machines  all  over  Europe.  Even  the  French,  before 
the  Great  War,  bought  this  German  machine.  If  you  were 
a  German  on  the  streets  of  Paris  before  the  war,  and  called 
a  cabman,  most  likely  he  wouldn't  take  you,  although  it  was 
against  the  law  to  refuse.  Yet  they  bought  the  machines 
made  in  Germany,  despite  their  having  eight  or  ten  calcu- 
lating-machine factories  in  France. 

There  is  no  question  but  what  the  first  machine  that  was 
accurate  enough  to  be  of  any  practical  value  was  the  Thomas 
machine  of  1820.    The  Odhner  machine  was  the  next.    And 


20  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

the  Brunsviga  machine  was  originally  made  under  patents 
granted  in  Germany,  which,  of  course,  have  expired. 

The  Babbage  Calculator 

Perhaps  the  most  famous  machine  in  English  literature 
is  the  Babbage  machine,  and  it  is  always  spoken  of  as  a 
calculator.  It  was  a  calculating  machine  in  one  sense.  But 
it  was  not  a  machine  that  would  do  multiplication,  or  divi- 
sion, or  addition.  The  theory  was  to  make  tables  by  use  of 
the  Babbage  machine  and  then  use  the  tables.  To  compute 
mentally  and  print  accurate  tables  is  very  difficult.  Babbage 
was  a  noted  English  scientist.  You  can  find  his  books  in  all 
the  large  city  libraries,  many  large  volumes  pertaining  to 
different  scientific  topics. 

In  the  case  of  the  Babbage  machine  the  idea  was  to  con- 
struct a  machine  to  grind  out  a  single  table,  and  then  after 
making  and  putting  into  the  machine  many  new  pieces  of 
mechanism,  grind  out  another  table,  and  so  on ; — practically 
making  a  new  machine  for  each  table.  It  was  quite  a  large 
machine.  Babbage  never  finished  it,  but  about  1833  he 
made  part  of  it.  The  part  he  made  was  about  three  feet 
high.  It  was  beautifully  made,  but  it  was  not  wholly  relia- 
ble. He  ran  out  of  money,  and  the  Parliament  of  England 
appropriated  for  his  use  seventeen  thousand  pounds  sterling. 
He  used  that  up  and  then  for  some  time  did  not  do  anything 
more  to  the  machine  until  Queen  Victoria  offered  to  assist 
him ;  but  then,  instead  of  completing  the  first  one,  he  started 
in  to  make  quite  a  different  machine,  called  an  "analytical 
engine."  It  was  for  a  different  purpose  altogether.  It  was 
intended  to  develop  algebraic  expressions.  Then  he  died. 
So  he  never  completed  either  one,  but  the  one  which  he 
partly  made,  called  a  "difference  engine,"  is  now  on  exhibi- 
tion in  England,  and  is  very  famous. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  21 

One  British  encyclopedia  devotes  many  pages  to  that 
machine,  and  Babbage  wrote  about  it  as  though  he  had 
actually  made  a  machine.  He  never  made  it,  and  could  not 
if  he  had  lived  a  thousand  years.  The  object  he  was  trying 
to  attain  was  all  right.  He  was  aiming  at  the  right  thing, 
but  he  could  not  produce  it. 

A  Successful  Swedish  Machine 

Just  about  that  time  a  man  named  Scheutz,  in  Stockholm, 
conceived  the  idea  of  making  a  machine  for  the  same  pur- 
pose. He  was  publishing  a  technical  journal  for  civil  and 
mechanical  engineers,  but  he  did  not  produce  the  machine 
alone.  His  son,  before  he  was  twenty,  while  in  school,  or 
just  about  the  time  he  came  out  of  school,  took  it  up  and 
between  the  father  and  son  they  constructed  a  machine. 
They  were  assisted  by  one  appropriation  of  $2,700  by  the 
Swedish  Government.  That  machine  worked.  It  was  begun 
in  1837  or  before.  Just  when  it  was  completed  is  not  certain. 
But  it  was  exhibited  in  England  in  1855.  It  was  being  used 
in  one  of  the  Government  offices  in  London  in  1862.  It  was 
employed  to  compute  a  mortuary  table — a  table  of  the  prob- 
abilities of  the  length  of  human  life.  They  had  very  few 
data  to  work  on,  but  they  had  the  life  statistics  of  several 
cities  in  England,  and  from  them  they  made  the  table,  which 
was  published  in  book  form  and  used  by  insurance  companies 
for  many  years.  It  was  the  first  mortuary  table  ever  made. 
It  was  accurate. 

One  thing  that  both  Babbage  and  Scheutz  appreciated  was 
that  all  tables  computed  mentally  are  more  or  less  inac- 
curate, due  to  errors  in  transcribing  and  typesetting  the 
figures.  So  they  were  going  to  overcome  that  difficulty  by 
having  a  machine  make  the  type  forms  they  printed  the 
tables  from.    Babbage  never  completed  this  machine,  but 


22  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

Scheutz  made  his  successfully.  To  make  the  type  to  print 
them  from,  he  had  a  strip  of  lead  about  three  inches  wide, 
into  which  the  answers  were  impressed  as  fast  as  computed, 
something  like  a  listing  machine  prints  its  answers  on  paper. 
The  answer  mechanism  used  by  Scheutz  was  the  same 
stepped  device  used  by  Hiett.  The  machine  was  turned  with 
a  crank,  as  we  turn  a  cider  mill,  and  as  the  machinery  ran 
along  it  computed  and  pressed  the  figures  into  lead.  Then 
they  made  stereotjrpes  from  the  lead  plates  to  print  from, 
so  that  they  got  right  onto  the  paper  the  very  figures  made 
by  the  machine.  There  was  no  chance  for  a  mistake  in 
transcribing. 

They  found  it  was  very  difficult  to  keep  the  Scheutz  ma- 
chine in  running  order.  The  British  Government  appro- 
priated some  money  to  build  another  on  the  same  plan,  only 
larger, — that  is,  to  take  in  more  columns, — and  was  going 
to  have  it  built  in  a  British  shop,  and  then,  of  course,  accord- 
ing to  British  ideas,  it  would  work  accurately.  The  people 
in  those  Islands  think  it  must  be  perfect  if  made  in  Britain, 
and  if  it  isn't  made  there  it  isn't  perfect. 

They  built  this  machine  in  the  great  engineering  works 
of  Bryan,  Donkin  &  Co.,  in  England,  and  it  is  supposed  to 
have  been  very  much  better  than  the  one  built  by  Scheutz, 
but  I  have  not  seen  it.  It  was  said  to  have  been  in  the  South 
Kensington  Museum  at  one  time,  but  I  could  not  find  it  or 
any  record  of  anybody  having  seen  it  for  years. 

The  first  Scheutz  machine  is  now  at  the  Dudley  Observ- 
atory, Albany,  New  York,  and  while  the  workmanship  is 
not  that  finely  finished  instrument-maker's  work  seen  in  the 
portion  of  the  Babbage  machine  that  was  constructed,  it  is 
"all  business."  You  can  see  it  is  a  machine  in  which  the 
man  kept  the  object  he  wanted  to  accomplish  in  mind,  and 
didn't  want  to  make  any  mirrors  for  the  ladies  to  look  into. 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  23 

so  his  money  held  out  till  he  produced  a  thing  that  could  be 
used.  It  was  bought  by  Mr.  Rathbone,  an  American,  and 
presented  to  the  Dudley  Observatory  some  years  ago.  They 
tried  to  use  it,  and  I  believe  did  use  it  somewhat  in  the 
Dudley  Observatory,  but  they  are  not  using  it  any  more, 
and  when  I  saw  it,  they  kept  it  in  a  room  full  of  old  rubbish. 
If  that  machine  was  in  Europe,  they  would  build  a  special 
building  to  keep  it  in.  France  would,  anyi;vay,  and  so  would 
Germany. 

Historic  Machines  in  France 

In  Paris  they  invited  me  to  come  to  the  National  Conserv- 
atory of  Arts  and  Meters,  on  a  day  when  it  was  closed  to 
the  public,  and  gave  me  a  man  with  a  screw-driver  to  open 
machines  for  me  to  examine.  I  spent  several  hours  there. 
They  have  many  historic  old  calculating  machines  there, 
and  I  brought  away  the  catalogue  and  a  volume  on  calculat- 
ing machines,  WTitten  by  Professor  Maurice  d'Ocagne.  Nat- 
urally, I  paid  most  attention  to  the  machines  the  histoiy  of 
which  I  was  already  familiar  with.  But  I  hope  to  be  able 
to  determine  whether  there  is  any  older  machine  than  the 
Pascal.  In  the  literature  the  Pascal  is  the  oldest — but  I 
think  there  are  some  machines  that  date  back  nearly  to  the 
year  1000. 

There  is  one  interesting  Chinese  machine  there.  We  have 
always  thought  of  Chinese  calculators  as  being  the  abacus 
and  nothing  else,  because  that  is  what  they  usually  use. 
But  in  Paris  there  is  a  Chinese  machine  that  has  wheels  and 
springs  and  is  operated  with  a  stylus.  This  machine  is 
about  four  inches  deep  and  six  inches  wide,  and  it  has  a  lot 
of  slots  in  the  top  of  it,  shaped  like  a  shepherd's  crook.  It 
is  operated  something  like  the  Goldman  machine,  which  is 
v\'ell  known  in  America,  only  instead  of  having  carrying 
mechanism  inside,  the  slot  for  the  stylus  ends  in  a  turn  so 


24  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

as  to  carry  the  stylus  around  and  back.  It  has  a  series  of 
black  and  a  series  of  white  numerals  showing  through  each 
slot.  If  the  number  to  be  added  is  found  among  the  black 
numerals,  you  go  in  one  direction ;  if  found  among  the  white, 
go  in  another  direction.  There  was  a  very  simple  machine 
on  something  like  that  principle — really  a  very  wonderful 
principle — advertised  from  Iowa  by  Locke  up  to  quite 
recently. 

Thomas  was  French  and  Stanhope  was  English.  Leibnitz 
was  German.  Moreland  was  English  and  Pascal  was  French. 
There  are  a  great  many  French  inventors  in  the  books,  hun- 
dreds of  them,  but  no  one  until  Thomas  ever  made  any 
highly-organized  machines  that  would  work  accurately  until 
very  recent  years,  and  none,  except  those  who  directly  copied 
Thomas  and  Odhner  and  maybe  Grant,  made  anything  that 
would  be  considered  useful  in  our  day,  until  key-operated 
machines  came  in. 

BoUee's  Machine  a  New  Type 

In  the  year  1889  a  Frenchman  named  Bollee  made  a  ma- 
chine of  an  entirely  new  type  on  entirely  new  principles. 
He  made  it  when  he  was  eighteen  years  old,  and  they  say 
he  never  had  heard  of  a  calculating  machine  before.  That 
was  another  case  where  the  boy's  father  was  a  customs 
officer  and  he  had  to  do  computing.  (By  the  way,  Pascal 
was  only  twenty  when  he  made  his  first  machine;  and 
Scheutz,  the  real  inventor,  Scheutz  the  son,  was  only  about 
twenty  when  he  made  his  machine.  Several  of  the  early 
inventors  of  calculating  machines  were  under  twenty-two 
or  twenty-three.)  This  machine  made  by  Bollee  was  for  mul- 
tiplication and  division.  It  would  be  entirely  impracticable 
for  addition,  and  it  wasn't  as  useful  for  dividing  as  the 
Thomas  or  the  Odhner.    For  multiplication  and  division  it 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  25 

was  very  good,  but  for  division  you  had  to  estimate  what 
your  quotient  figure  was  every  time  before  operating  the 
machine,  which  you  don't  have  to  do  with  the  Thomas  or 
Odhner.  Nevertheless  it  is  often  used  for  division,  and  is 
very  good  for  multiplication.  You  probably  sometimes  see 
that  machine  now,  or  one  containing  the  same  principle,  in 
what  is  called  the  Millionaire.  The  Millionaire  is  manufac- 
tured under  the  patents  of  E.  Steiger  of  Germany.  It  is 
manufactured  in  Switzerland.  The  principle  of  the  Bollee 
machine  was  another  case  of  the  multiplication  table  put 
into  material  form. 

Napier  put  the  multiplication  table  on  bone  rods  by  en- 
graving on  them  the  figures  representing  the  multiplication 
table.  Bollee  didn't  do  that.  Bollee  took  a  plate  of  metal 
and  stood  on  it  a  series  of  pins  of  graduated  lengths.  One 
pin  would  be  1  unit  high,  the  next  2  units  high,  the  last  pin 
of  the  series  9  units  high.  This  represented  the  first  nine 
steps  of  the  multiplication  table,  once  one,  once  two,  once 
three,  etc.  The  next  series  of  pins  was  first  2  units  high, 
the  next  4  units  high,  and  so  on,  and  stood  for  2X1,  2X2, 
and  so  on. 

He  arranged  these  plates  to  slide  back  and  forth  in  the 
machine  in  such  manner  that  when  the  operator  moved  the 
knobs  attached  to  the  plates  carrying  the  graduated  pins  so 
as  to  set  up  on  the  machine  any  certain  number, — ^for  in- 
stance, as  one  would  set  the  multiplicand  on  the  Thomas  or 
Brunsviga, — and  then  moved  a  crank  along  an  index,  leav- 
ing it  at  any  particular  figure, — ^for  instance,  7, — then  by 
moving  a  second  crank  the  machine  would  instantly  indicate 
seven  times  the  multiplicand  originally  set  up.  By  an  opera- 
tion of  this  kind  for  each  figure  of  the  multiplier  any  prob- 
lem in  multiplication  could  be  performed. 

A  small  number  of  the  Bollee  machines  were  made  and 


26  MECHANICAL  ARITHMETIC  OR 

used,  but  in  recent  years  he  has  gone  into  the  automobile 
business  and  I  guess  he  will  not  make  another,  because 
money  is  easier  made  in  automobiles  than  in  calculators.  It 
was  a  fine  machine,  with  much  mechanism  in  it.  It  was 
used  for  making  tables  as  well. 

The  Steiger  machine,  usually  known  as  the  Millionaire, 
instead  of  using  pins,  employs  notches  in  disks,  the  disks 
turning  around.  It  is  the  same  principle,  except  that  disks 
with  notches  supplant  the  rows  of  pins. 

A  man  named  Saunders  in  New  Jersey  about  ten  years 
ago  carried  the  Bollee  principle  still  farther,  using  the 
Steiger  form.  On  the  Millionaire  and  Bollee  you  have  to  set 
two  or  three  things  and  move  a  crank  for  each  figure  of  one 
factor,  but  Saunders  made  a  machine  in  which  you  simply 
set  up  on  one  series  of  indices  for  the  multiplicand,  and 
another  for  all  the  digits  of  the  multiplier,  and  then  by 
moving  the  second  crank  once  the  answer  is  at  once  dis- 
played, instead  of  having  to  move  both  cranks  for  each  digit 
of  the  multiplier. 

Machines  of  Recent  Invention 

Now,  to  come  down  to  more  immediate  times,  Pottin — I 
believe  he  was  a  Frenchman — made  the  first  attempt  to 
construct  a  key-operated  machine  to  add  and  print.  A  man 
named  Baldwin  in  St.  Louis,  in  1872,  made  a  calculating 
machine  that  added  and  printed,  but  it  was  not  key-oi)er- 
ated.  He  used  the  Odhner  principle  in  his  calculating 
mechanism.  He  made  a  number  of  machines.  In  the  litera- 
ture of  the  subject  he  is  quite  famous  as  a  maker  of  calcu- 
lators, although  he  never  made  but  four  or  five.  One  of  his 
models  is  in  the  Patent  Office  at  Washington.  It  is  a  beau- 
tiful piece  of  mechanism;  but  it  would  last  about  thirty 
minutes  if  you  tried  to  use  it  in  the  rapid  and  rough  way 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  COUNTING  MACHINE  27 

calculating  machines  are  used  in  this  country.  It  worked 
if  you  handled  it  with  great  care.  That  machine  would 
add  and  print  a  list  of  numbers  on  a  tape  of  paper. 

There  was  a  machine  made  about  the  same  time  by  a 
man  in  Germany  named  Sellings,  which  did  the  same  thing. 
It  is  in  the  museum  in  Munich.  Also  a  later  machine  by 
him,  which  does  not  print.  I  believe  it  was  all  right  as  a 
multiplying  machine,  but  as  a  listing  machine  I  don't  think 
it  amounted  to  much.  The  underlying  principle  of  the 
Sellings  machine  was  quite  original.  There  are  two  Sellings 
machines  in  the  museum  at  Munich,  each  very  different  from 
the  other.  The  first  was  somewhat  crude  and  fragile.  The 
second  one  was  more  substantial  and  looks  as  though  it 
would  stand  some  practical  use. 

Of  course,  it  could  be  said  that  the  Scheutz  machine  added 
and  printed,  because  you  could  read  the  type  that  it  made 
to  Drint  by.  It  could  be  said  that  that  was  a  listing  machine, 
but  it  was  a  mighty  slow  one.  Some  of  those  early  machines 
were  operated  by  power.  I  believe  the  second  Scheutz 
machine  was.  Prof.  d'Ocagne  in  his  book  on  mechanical 
calculators  mentions  several  early  machines  operated  by 
power,  one  by  an  electric  motor. 

Pottin  in  1883  took  out  a  patent  in  France,  and  a  patent 
in  England.  He  registered  in  each  case  from  Paris,  France. 
He  has  taken  out  four  patents  in  this  country,  but  I  have 
never  been  able  to  find  out  for  sure  what  Pottin's  native 
country  was,  and  I  wouldn't  be  surprised  to  find  that  it  was 
America,  because  his  first  patent  was  taken  out  from  Phila- 
delphia. 

Pottin  actually  made  a  machine,  but  I  cannot  find  what 
became  of  it.  Prof.  d'Ocagne,  who  has  written  several  vol- 
umes on  the  history  of  mechanical  calculators,  never  heard 
of  Pottin  until  I  told  him  about  him.    Once  I  met  a  patent 


28 

^awyer  who  claimed  to  have  gone  to  Europe  and  investigated 
Pottin's  machine,  and  said  he  found  that  one  was  made  and 
that  it  worked;  but  it  seems  strange  to  me  that,  if  it  did 
work,  they  would  not  know  something  about  it  in  France, 
where  they  get  so  excited  over  our  Comptograph  or  Compt- 
ometer. 

[Editor's  Note. —  With  the  modesty  of  a  successful  in- 
ventor, Mr.  Felt  concludes  his  lecture  without  mentioning 
the  marvelous  results  of  his  own  efforts  to  give  the  business 
world  a  practical  counting-machine  of  convenient  size,  abso- 
lute accuracy,  great  durability,  and  moderate  cost.  But  his 
machines  speak  for  themselves  in  thousands  of  busy  offices, 
not  only  in  the  United  States,  but  throughout  the  civilized 
world.] 


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